Because boy, (you were born to run)
by The Readers Muse
Summary: He'd learned to run before he'd learned walk.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own AMC's Fear The Walking Dead. Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.

 **Authors Note #1:** This is set post 1x03 "The Dog" but has no real episode spoilers. Details Nick's thought process as everything starts falling apart.

 **Warnings:** deals with issues of drug addition, drug use, altered-states, adult language, mature themes.

 **Because boy, (you were born to run)**

He'd learned to run before he'd learned walk.

" _Places to go, people to see,"_ his mom always said when she told the story. How he'd crashed head first into the fake fire place because he'd decided that speed was a better move than trying to figure out how that whole balance thing worked. She still laughed when she reeled it back, eyes unfocused like she was back there watchin' it all happen. But nowadays, ever since the first time she'd found him on the side of the road – hazed out and raving – her voice had a wistful edge to it. Like deep down she was angry that he wasn't that stupid, clever, curious little kid anymore.

He didn't blame her.

Not really.

After all, no one hated him more than himself.

* * *

He'd always liked to run. There was something freeing about it. Something natural and baser that connected with forgotten nerves and atrophying ligaments before unfurling back up and into the brain like pleasure. _Like a high_. When he'd been younger, all he'd craved was the adrenaline. Trying to see how fast he could go and for how long. Living for the burn in his muscles and the subtle change in the way it all happened as the years of his childhood slipped past without ceremony. He fell in love with it, he supposed. In love with the way the sweat cooled chill across his skin as Alicia turned the A.C up to full blast in the car and he tried to worm his soccer cleats under the seat to worry at her ankles in retaliation.

Then their dad died and everything changed.

Seemed like, these days, he was always running away from something.

Dad's ghost had always cast the largest shadow. So, yeah, he ran.

For a long time, he thought he'd always run.

* * *

"There will come a time when you won't want to run anymore," Gloria told him one morning. High-wise and pupil-deep into her early morning score. Erie and far too honest in a way that made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. Feeling trapped and close as the walls closed in around him and she sprawled – like a fallen angel with no desire to collect their tarnished halo – across his lap.

He ended up stammering out some excuse and nudging himself out from under her. Leaving her blinking owlishly in her slinky slip, blonde hair everywhere, and took off running down the side streets. Not stopping until his lungs hiccupped and he started coughing like he was dying. Looking up to find himself in an unfamiliar alley ten blocks away in just his jeans and nothing else. Bare feet sliced up and raw as some bus-boy watched him warily through the open door of the grease-shed he'd stopped beside.

He'd called Calvin for a ride back and injected himself with some fresh shit before he was halfway through the door-jam of the crappy pay-by-the-day motel they were staying in. Needing it so badly that Calvin just shook his head and sped off. Muttering about liabilities and junkies that couldn't keep their heads.

Sometimes he just needed to run.

That was what he told her when she woke up.

Gloria never mentioned it again after that.

* * *

As far as he was concerned the end of everything was just karma coming to collect.

 _God, he'd been selfish._

Just figured that everyone else – his mom, Alicia, even Travis - would have to suffer for it.

 _Business as fuckin' usual._

* * *

He knew it was cliché but the end of the world changed everything.

He wasn't sure if he'd been ahead of the curve or on the ass end this whole time, maybe it didn't matter. But hell if the irony of it hadn't physically _hurt_ considering that by the time he was ready to slow down, stop running and try his hand at that whole living right thing, everyone else had started running too.

Because the terrible truth was, it was too late to go back.

He'd had his chance to go back and get his head right when it'd really mattered.

When it would have made a difference.

 _But now?_

Now it was just shit.

 _Everything was shit._

America? The entire world? It was all on the brink as far as anyone could tell. Now he didn't have to be coasting high to catch the screams ripping through the muggy city air. Now he didn't have to be buzzing to pick out the slow, deafening silence that was lurking – building at the very edge of his senses like a rotten smell. Because now it is actually happening.

It wasn't a bad trip or a mislabeled pill.

It wasn't something that was going to stop when the high wore off.

No, this _was_ their new reality.

It was fear and terror and blood just as much as it was bad decisions and houses with all the lights on but no one home. It was anticipation, rage, grief and the smell of your own stink because you were wearing a stranger's clothes and hadn't showered in days. It was the acrid scent of crushed pills, spilled chemicals and expelled shot and deep down something inside him was telling him that wasn't going to change. Not this time.

Now he didn't have any choice _but_ to run.

None of them did.

Gloria had been right all along.

* * *

 **A/N:** Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – This story is now complete.


End file.
